craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

great, ferociously interesting post. more please.

cheers imago, they're placeholders for further reading as much as anything else - the Yorkshire Ranter pieces are well worth reading tho. For the moment should just note that excerpt came from a World Bank report, not a UN report.

Excellent post and very apt choice of thread, Mr. Fizzles T. C. The importance of craft emerges more prominently as available capital recedes, but even in a heavily capitalized venture it's always there, even if it is mostly sunken from view.

http://i.imgur.com/S79bUfd.gif

jfc

support craftsmanship, or at least give me a sliver of a chance at become a craftsman, and becoming one full time. Vote for my letterpress business here:

https://www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/business/detail/52517

congrats on your wedding

thanks! 6 months this past weekend.

http://www.artshub.co.uk/job/london/visual-artists/apprentice-to-globe-makers-190996

http://www.bellerbyandco.com/index.php/globes.html

so perfect

http://www.remadeco.org/

amazing

Kevin Faul
December 6, 2013 at 7:05am
Do you guys ship overnight? I have a hell of a clog going on here and I'm scared to use this plunger of questionable origin under my sink. Please let me know asap
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Arbor Salvio

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Re Made Company Yes. Definitely. We can help you out with that clog.

I initially didn't notice that the NYT article wasn't actually on the NYT website and I was reading through getting more and more confused

I thought this was interesting, even if it seems like an inevitable result:
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/etsy-not-good-for-crafters

http://thebrotique.co.uk/collections/manhampers

Designed for the man who needs everything, our exclusive range of manhampers are designed to make gift giving easier than ever before. Build your own or choose from one of our carefully designed Manhampers, with something for every kind of gent.

#manhamper

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0296/4057/products/Bicycle-Wine-Rack-angle-front.jpg

oopsmark Bicycle Wine Rack

£27.00

Perfect for that boozy bike ride (don't drink and drive)

If you like wine and you like biking, you're going to love this. The handmade leather bicycle wine rack is perfect for taking wine with you on the go. It easily attaches to most bike frames with antique brass fasteners, while the hidden clamps hold the bottle securely. Best of all, the vegetable-tanned leather will only look better as it ages.

"the vegetable-tanned leather will only look better as it ages" is one of those things that jumps out at me as sort of an arriviste shibboleth. Like, leather looks better as it ages, that's a thing about leather, right? It wears in. Nobody with decades of history of selling things made of leather would bother to point that out, their customer knows that about leather.

jfc sooooo tired of "man____" manbags manbun manhamper mancave i will vomit next time i hear this

manvom

seriously we're just passing over "brotique" or is that on another thread

I was gonna comment, but I can't believe they're not also in on the joke, so...

Was "mantiques" already taken?

chapcessories

http://motorola-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/introducing-new-level-of-customization-moto-selfie-stick.html

The 21st century riding crop

Gee, I hope that is an April fool.

Might as well throw this in here, too:

http://carles.buzz/the-contemporary-conformist/

and this! http://carles.buzz/artisan-meaning-contemporary-conformist/

A Contemporary Conformist is a ‘jack of all trades’ when it comes to art/design, therefor they view everything they create as artisanal. If they made dinner and microplaned some parmesan on top of it, it was an artisanal event. If they put something in the over, it was artisanal. Everything that Contemporary Conformists make at home is artisanal, even if they just put something away in a baggie.

Make.
Everything.
Look.
Artisan.
As.
Fuck.

Contemporary Conformists see everything they do as artisanal, and want everything they consume/buy/ingest/style their homes with/talk about with every one to seem ‘artisanal.’

A Contemporary Conformist wants to walk over from their factory-converted lots/newly renovated home-apartment in a historical section of town to get artisanal coffee. They want an artisanal egg from an artisanal farm with a side of artisanal avocado toast served on artisanal Ezekiel bread for breakfast. They want an artisanal small plate lunch from an artisanal food truck while taking a break from their Contemporary Conformist job that allows them/office-pressure-forces them to wear artisanal Business_Contemporary-Conformist-Casual to work.

We are just trying to validate our 3rd-5th tier American cities.

i think there's a kernel of insight buried in there but i think it's more interesting to think of 'contemporary conformist' as an design aesthetic or a mode of production & consumption than a type of person, since that's where it comes across as a bit strawmannish for me.

patron sailor might I invite you to at some point update this thread on what you've been learning on your fiber journey? (A yarn store employee once told me "good luck on your fiber journey" and that has stuck with me)

my fiber journey is currently involves an exploration of an iron age weaving technique, namely tablet weaving (also known as card weaving). from what i understand, most people who tablet weave these days are into creative anachronism and/or reenacting viking battles. i don't do those things but the weaving is fun.

tablet weaving is mainly used for making patterned bands and braids, which can be used as straps, belts, or garment trim. it's an interesting technique to learn because it doesn't require a loom at all (though it can be done on many types of conventional looms). all you need is a set of cards (square, with a hole in each corner) and yarn (threaded through the holes); as you weave, you turn the cards forward or backwards, changing the position of the warp yarns. depending on how the cards are threaded and the sequence of card turns, you can make make extremely elaborate patterns. it's pretty neat.

anyway, here's the latest thing i did. about 2 yards in an advancing wave pattern

http://i.imgur.com/ChpnSFA.jpg

I probably have more to say about my handicrafts and how i think of them in relation to the titular focus of this thread, if anyone cares -- but just for right now I'm thinking about how (typically white) people will describe or market certain handmade goods with fucked up quasi-racist terms. pinterest & etsy are truly minefields of suspect language.

"ethnic" "tribal" "gypsy" "primitive"

okay, maybe those are just straight-out unqualified racist.

whenever someone describes something as "tribal" or "ethnic" it's like -- what tribe? which ethnicity? rhetorical questions, of course, since they all seem to indicate an undifferentiated kind of "exotic" non-whiteness.

a nice little wage

I guess this is as good a thread as any for this, but one category I find really head-scratchy is artisanal junk food. E.g. I just tried Doughnut Plant for the first time (and I've had Dough a few times), and honestly, it's really delicious, but it came to almost $9 for an iced coffee and a big donut square. They seem to be doing well - they've expanded, but what is the market for eating stuff like that on a regular basis? It's expensive enough to only be for the affluent, but unhealthy enough to not seem like something most affluent urbanites would eat often.

whenever someone describes something as "tribal" or "ethnic" it's like -- what tribe? which ethnicity? rhetorical questions, of course, since they all seem to indicate an undifferentiated kind of "exotic" non-whiteness.

otm, and really, hasn't this been par for the course since, like, Marco Polo? How much worse was understanding of Chinese culture to a 13th century European than to a 21st century American? 10%? less?

http://www.typeeast.com/collections/typewriters/products/hand-typed-letter

I don't want to get too down on these people ^ because they seem like an OK bunch but still

Using a typewriter would still be my favoured writing tool, at least for initial composition. In fact, god, I might have to go along there, having lost my olivetti portable a few years ago. Maybe I will set up a hand-typed letter service. Thanks TH!

"hand-typed" oh ffs

keys lovingly pressed in sequence manually by Mavis Beacon herself

or Jack Webb
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Mark_VII_logo_1953(1).jpg

So glad I have prehensile toes with which to type at my computer.